This article was published as Vol 6, No 1 of The Anvil, March-April 2017 ---- Against
majority expectations, last November Donald Trump was elected President of the United
States. He was inaugurated in January with the most reactionary Cabinet in living memory.
While, considered individually, almost all of his choices (i.e. excepting Steve Bannon)
would fit into a government of his Republican rivals, as a whole they represent an attempt
to implement a radical shift of US public policy. ---- Trump has since come under strong
pressure from elements within the State to change course. These elements are aligned
either to the Democratic Party or to the old guard of the Republicans, the people Trump
shoved aside to get the nomination. Such dynamics have dominated the media reportage of
Trump and the way he has been going about governing. While they are significant, the MACG
believes that there are two far more important considerations. The first is the reason why
Trump won and the second is how to build effective opposition to Trump and the forces he
has unleashed.

Why Trump Won

Trump's campaign slogan "Make America Great Again" struck a chord that the Business As
Usual platform of Hillary Clinton did not. It should be noted at the outset that this was
setting the bar very low. Clinton was foisted on the Democratic Party membership by a
party machine armed with an immense war chest of Wall St money. The Democrats also took
for granted a range of US states where the working class was being kicked in the teeth by
them, and yet union officials were still expected to deliver their votes. The result was a
collapse in the Democrat vote, so that Trump won, despite collecting fewer votes than any
Republican this century.

So why did "Make America Great Again" strike that chord? What had changed in the United
States so that a candidate who previously would have been disqualified on many counts
could actually be elected? Why were some sections of the US capitalist class prepared to
break ranks and support Trump?

US Decline

Trump's campaign resonated because he said out loud that the US is declining in power and
he promised to change that. Trump's slogan combined three different issues into one
compelling vision. The first issue was the huge social changes in the US in the last forty
years. Demographic change such as the changing ethnic composition of US society, the rise
of working women and the increasing acceptance of LGBTIQ people threatens traditional
social hierarchies and lifestyles.

The second issue was the dominance of neoliberalism in the US over that time. The
consequences included stagnation of real incomes for most people, loss of opportunity for
social advancement for many and monopolisation of the fruits of economic growth by a tiny
minority referred to these days as "the 1%".

The third issue was the declining power of the United States on the world stage. It became
necessary to wage frequent, inconclusive and increasingly endless wars to defend the world
order which the US created but which now seems to benefit other countries more than the
US. That is why a large minority of the US electorate and a crucial minority of the US
capitalist class decided: that America is no longer great like it used to be. Emergency
action is required to Make America Great Again.

Trump is offering the illusion that he can turn back the clock. He can force other
countries like Mexico and China to do what Uncle Sam tells them. He can bring back secure
jobs to workers impoverished by decades of neoliberalism. He can roll back decades of
social change by making America White again. This is not conservatism - it is reaction. It
is impossible to achieve and even the attempt will require massive amounts of State violence.

In foreign policy, Trump proposes a radically different approach he is calling "America
First". He believes that the system of alliances which the US has built up over the past
years has outlived its usefulness to the US. It carries a heavy overhead cost, without
giving the US anywhere near enough benefit. Some people believe that Trump will tend more
to isolationism and refrain from fighting so many wars to defend the current order, but
they are wrong. Trump's vision doesn't lead to fewer wars, but different ones. Trump's
wars will be direct raids for booty, while allies will be asked, "What have you done for
us lately?" The question will be asked regularly. It remains to be seen, though, how
thoroughly "America First" will be implemented.

What is to be done?

There is already massive opposition to Trump's presidency in the US and around the world.
There are different currents to this opposition, and the Melbourne Anarchist Communist
Group believes it is essential to distinguish between them in order to advance the
interests of the working class. First, it is necessary to distinguish between Trump's
government and the pre-existing Alt-Right movement which he has energised. Second, it is
necessary to distinguish between the elements in the anti-Trump resistance which are
fundamentally establishment and conservative and those elements which have something to
offer the working class, even if some of their offerings are flawed. Finally, it is
necessary to understand the best division of labour between movements inside and outside
the United States.

The Alt-Right

Donald Trump is a racist populist with a dangerous authoritarian streak. To call him a
Fascist, however, is a dangerous mistake. Trump's government, nasty as it is, operates
within the norms of capitalist democracy. Calling Trump a Fascist obscures the danger of
the actual Fascists who are now mobilising under his banner and attempting to build gangs
of genocidal thugs. The only Fascist in Trump's Cabinet is Steve Bannon, the former editor
of Breitbart.

On the ground, however, all sorts of Fascist and even neo-Nazi groups are emerging to
support Trump and push him to fulfil his most extreme rhetoric. At the same time they are
engaging in extreme violence against their opponents and are planning vastly more. People
like Richard Spencer and Milo Yiannopoulos are key figures in the attempt to crystallise
an emerging Fascist network, though as yet they have had limited success in making the
transition from keyboard trolls with genocidal fantasies to a cadre of genocidal
stormtroopers.

The appropriate response to Right wing populists who operate within the parameters of
capitalist democracy is a political mobilisation. The appropriate response to the Fascists
attempting to organise in Trump's reflected glory is reasonable force in self defence.
This means that public events organised by or giving a platform to actual Fascists
(defined clearly so as to distinguish them from mere Right populists) should be shut down
and the participants dispersed. In this case, self defence encompasses pre-emptive force
because their violent intent is not open to reasonable doubt and it is impractical to
follow Fascists around waiting for them to attack their intended victims.

Resistance

Large sections of the US ruling class believe that Trump is pursuing dangerous policies in
a dangerous way. Perhaps the most notable evidence of the depth of this disaffection is
the stream of leaks coming out of the CIA and FBI. The wide variety of activities in the
anti-Trump resistance, however, have only two strategic orientations. One is essentially
conservative and aims to keep Trump within the bounds of capitalist legality and to build
electoral support for the Democratic Party. The other is radical and aims to build a
movement with the social power to prevent Trump implementing his program, regardless of
its legal status. Such social power can only be based on the working class. Attempts to
build this movement based on forces other than the working class have insufficient power
and will be dominated by the conservative Democratic Party.

The conservative anti-Trump resistance, while impressive in scope, will fail for two
reasons. Firstly, its organisations act to demobilise and disempower grassroots activists,
while remaining silent on the areas of continuity between Trump and previous presidents.
The Democratic Party has no strategy to deal with Trump's policies if they are upheld by
the courts. Democrats will find it difficult to support anti-deportation actions when
Barack Obama himself earned the title of "Deporter-in-Chief" by deporting more immigrants
than any previous US president. Secondly, and more fundamentally, the conservative
anti-Trump resistance cannot address the reasons why Trump came to power in the first
place. It has no answer to the ever-growing disparity between rich and poor, no answer to
the decay of industrial towns in the mid-West and no answer to the gradual erosion of US
primacy in world affairs. Its policies have produced the first two phenomena, while there
is no answer to the third. The resistance of the Democratic Party, therefore, is built on
sand.

Mobilising effectively can only be done through the working class. The airport
mobilisations, while inspiring, stopped with the limited court victories. If airport
workers had occupied their workplaces, the challenge to Trump would have been stronger. A
few hundred coppers can clear a terminal of protestors, but they cannot find a scab
workforce to handle baggage, check tickets, or re-fuel and re-provision planes - let alone
fly and staff the planes. The working class has the social power to turn Trump's Executive
Orders and his laws into mere pieces of paper.

Two conditions must be met before the working class will mobilise against Trump. First,
there must be a program that is clearly in their interests that they can fight for. It is
only in the context of the struggle for higher wages and better conditions for all that
white workers can be broken from racism and won to the principle of "Touch One, Touch
All". Only in the course of struggle will white workers recognise that their racial
prejudice is an impediment to their victory. Fighting racism and all other forms of
special oppression is an essential part of building the strength of the class sufficient
to win.

Second, there must be a recognition of the obstacles on the road - principally the union
bureaucracy. In most industrialised countries, and the US in particular, union officials
are wedded to conservative industrial and political strategies that guarantee death to
unionism. This was displayed to great effect in the US last year when the union
bureaucrats, almost to a person, supported Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primaries,
despite her program being manifestly inferior to Bernie Sanders (who, himself, was
unsupportable, though this is a different topic). For workers to mobilise to fight Trump,
rather than merely voting against him, will require rank and file networks capable of
rolling over the opposition of union bureaucrats. These networks must begin to take the
dimensions of a parallel and unofficial union movement outside the control of the officials.

Different tasks in response to the challenge

For the most part, it is only workers inside the US who can take the necessary direct
action against Trump. Only they can fight for the program which is necessary to defeat
Trump, the old guard Republicans and the Democrats. Direct action against Trump may be
possible for some workers outside the US (e.g. workers in US-owned corporations, workers
supplying US military bases), but this is necessarily supplementary and guided by the
tempo of US events.

Outside the US, the main task will be to continue building resistance to the capitalists
in countries where we are. Here in Australia, we must build a movement which can defend
wages, jobs, housing and social services, while also consolidating the working class by
fighting for Aboriginal rights, refugee rights, abortion and child care rights and the
right to same sex marriage. Here in Australia, building resistance means creating a rank
and file movement to take on the Laborite bureaucrats who run the unions, but don't defend
them against capitalists' attacks.

Finally, the role of Anarchists, whether in the US or elsewhere, is to organise to argue
in support of a program of this nature and to play an exemplary role in the struggle for
it. Hop to it, comrades.